BRUSSELS/WARSAW: The European Union will toughen sanctions on Belarus on Monday and may extend them to include airlines and others involved in transporting migrants, the EU’s top diplomat said, as the migrant crisis on the Polish border intensifies.
Ahead of an EU foreign ministers’ meeting, Germany’s Heiko Maas said airlines could be told to stop transporting migrants to Minsk or face being banned from landing in Europe, warning: “We are nowhere near the end of the sanctions spiral.”
Europe accuses Belarus of mounting “a hybrid attack” by flying in migrants from countries like Syria and Afghanistan and pushing them to cross illegally into EU member Poland. Belarus has repeatedly denied the accusation.
On Monday morning, Polish border guards warned migrants on the other side of the border over loudspeakers that force could be used against them if they disobey orders, after Poland and Lithuania reported they stopped over 100 people each attempting to enter on Sunday.
Arriving at the meeting in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters the ministers would approve further sanctions on Minsk on Monday. The EU might also seek to broaden them to include airlines, travel agents and other people involved in transporting migrants to Belarus.
Borrell said he had told the Belarusian foreign minister over the weekend that the situation on the border was completely unacceptable and that humanitarian help was needed.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was quoted as saying on Monday that Minsk would retaliate against any new sanctions imposed on it by the West.
State news agency Belta also quoted him as saying that Belarus is trying to persuade migrants living in camps near its western border to return home, but without success.
Thousands of migrants have traveled to Belarus in the hope of crossing into the European Union, only to find themselves trapped on the wooded border in bitter winter conditions.
They moved toward the Polish frontier last Monday, setting up a camp there and, in groups, attempting to enter Poland and nearby Lithuania numerous times.
Poland said it had arrested four foreigners on Sunday attempting to transport 33 migrants out of the country.
EU members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have warned the standoff could escalate into a military conflict. Their presidents will meet in Vilnius on Monday to discuss the crisis, and will speak to Polish President Andrzej Duda by videolink.
Belarusian state-owned carrier Belavia said in a notice that the United Arab Emirates had barred Afghan, Syrian, Yemeni and Iraqi citizens from flights to Minsk on Monday.
Arriving in Brussels, Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the EU might help with repatriations from Belarus back to the Middle East.
He called for all Belarusian airports to be off-limits for airlines potentially carrying would-be migrants, adding: “We need to make Minsk airport a no-fly zone.”
EU to step up sanctions on Belarus over escalating border crisis
https://arab.news/4ymkn
EU to step up sanctions on Belarus over escalating border crisis
After nearly 7 weeks and many rumors, Bolivia’s ex-leader reappears in his stronghold
- Morales was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile
- He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country
LA PAZ: Bolivia’s long-serving socialist former leader, Evo Morales, reappeared Thursday in his political stronghold of the tropics after almost seven weeks of unexplained absence, endorsing candidates for upcoming regional elections and quieting rumors he had fled the country in the wake of the US seizure of his ally, Venezuela’s ex-President Nicolás Maduro.
The weeks of hand-wringing over Morales’ fate showed how little the Andean country knows about what’s happening in the remote Chapare region, where the former president has spent the past year evading an arrest warrant on human trafficking charges, and how vulnerable it is to fears about US President Donald Trump’s potential future foreign escapades.
The media outlet of Morales’ coca-growing union, Radio Kawsachun Coca, released footage of Morales smiling in dark sunglasses as he arrived via tractor at a stadium in the central Bolivian town of Chimoré to address his supporters.
Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile, explained that he had come down with chikungunya, a mosquito-borne ailment with no treatment that causes fever and severe joint pain, and suffered complications that “caught me by surprise.”
“Take care of yourselves against chikungunya — it is serious,” the 66-year-old Morales said, appearing markedly more frail than in past appearances.
He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country, vowing to remain in Bolivia despite the threat of arrest under conservative President Rodrigo Paz, whose election last October ended nearly two decades of rule by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party.
“Some media said, ‘Evo is going to leave, Evo is going to flee.’ I said clearly: I am not going to leave. I will stay with the people to defend the homeland,” he said.
Paz’s revival of diplomatic ties with the US and recent efforts to bring back the Drug Enforcement Administration — some 17 years after Morales expelled American anti-drug agents from the Andean country while cozying up to China, Russia, Cuba and Iran — have rattled the coca-growing region that serves as Morales’ bastion of support.
Paz on Thursday confirmed that he would meet Trump in Miami on March 7 for a summit convening politically aligned Latin American leaders as the Trump administration seeks to counter Chinese influence and assert US dominance in the region.
Before proclaiming the candidates he would endorse in Bolivia’s municipal and regional elections next month, Morales launched into a lengthy speech reminiscent of his once-frequent diatribes against US imperialism.
“This is geopolitical propaganda on an international scale,” he said of Trump’s bid to revive the Monroe Doctrine from 1823 in order to reassert American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. “They want to eliminate every left-wing party in Latin America.”
